


Empyrean

by cutsycat



Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [924]
Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-17 10:08:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12363393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: After Jackie's death, Vance decides to step down as director. Just who replaces him and how does that change things for the MCRT. Can they all handle the change?





	Empyrean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Appletini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Appletini/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Appletini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Appletini/pseuds/Appletini) in the [NCIS_Prompts_2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/NCIS_Prompts_2017) collection. 



> Another dictionary.com word of the day drabble. This time from 11/11/2001 for the word [empyrean](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2001/11/11/empyrean).
> 
> empyrean  
> The highest heaven, in ancient belief usually thought to be a realm of pure fire or light.  
> Heaven; paradise.  
> The heavens; the sky.
> 
> This was requested by Appletini who prompted me through [here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/NCIS_Prompts_2017/profile). I'm not sure this is really what she intended when she prompted me, but I hope she likes it anywhere.
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> If this is too detailed then just let Muse do what she wants lol. Although I want a happy Tibbs ending, as always. ;)
> 
> Vance gets a new job and Gibbs surprises everyone by deciding to take a promotion. Tony becomes team lead and McGee his second. Ziva can't handle the change and goes back to Israel and no one cares. The team gets twin probies called Susan and Samuel Wang.
> 
> Tony figures Gibbs might be open to a relationship now that they're no longer on the same team and decides to court/woo/seduce Gibbs, only his bizarre behavior makes everyone think he's cracked under the pressure of being team lead.
> 
>  **End Prompt**  
> 
> As always comments, kudos, and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. 
> 
> Prompts are open. More information is available at the end of the work if you want to prompt me yourself.
> 
> Note: If you like Ziva you will probably not like this story.

# 

Empyrean

Jackie's death was the final straw for Leon. He had to get out of such a dangerous occupation. In theory, the position of director shouldn't have been that dangerous, but as it got his wife killed and he had two kids to take care of, he decided to pursue a different career. He'd tendered his resignation to SecNav just a couple of months after Jackie's death.

SecNav had not expected Vance to retire so soon. He'd expected that even with the loss of his wife Vance would continue to work as the agency head for many years. Heck, he'd expected Vance would need the work to cope with the loss of Jackie.

As such, he had to scramble to find a good NCIS agent to take over on short notice. With few choices in the DC office, he appointed one Leroy Jethro Gibbs as acting director. Searching through candidates outside the DC office, he realized that even with Gibbs he had at most three candidates.

Probably less than that as Gibbs always refused the position and he wasn't sure if either of the other two would be willing to move to DC. Still all he could do was offer and see who accepted and hope that he didn't have to find more candidates. He started with the one furthest away.

Maria Beck was quite happy with her current post. Her kid was enrolled at the best possible school and Maria could see her every evening. Her daughter, Lexi, had a good group of friends here.

Maria's husband, Chris, had a great job here as well. She just couldn't see uprooting everyone to move to DC or doing part time in DC and part time here. She took the weekend to think it over as SecNav requested, but her final answer was still no.

SecNav moved onto the next candidate, Jason Black. Black was a no nonsense kind of guy and was practically incapable of straying from the rules. Not the best candidate, but with Gibbs likely to say no and Beck already having refused, SecNav needed him to take the position. 

It surprised SecNav when Black turned him down. Black’s exact words were “I’m a follow the rules kind of guy. Not a make the rules kind of guy.”

SecNav had no choice, but to offer the permanent position to Gibbs and start looking for other people who could fill the position when Gibbs said no. Gibbs always said no to the director position. This would be the third time that the position had been offered to Gibbs. 

The first was when Tom Morrow left. The second was when Jenny was replaced. There was no reason to think this time would be any different than the last three times, but apparently it was.

SecNav stared in shock at Gibbs as he accepted the director position permanently. “Not that I’m not grateful and excited to work with you, but you’ve always refused before. What’s different now?”

Gibbs grunted, but knowing he’d have to talk more in the position of director softly offered, “Agent DiNozzo is ready to lead the MCRT. Plus, a few more personal reasons that I’m not willing to share.”

SecNav nodded respectfully and left him to it, pleased that he wouldn’t have to look for another candidate. There would be some additional discussions they’d need to have, but as Gibbs was already acting director they could wait for a bit. The announcement of the new director wouldn’t go out until the discussions had been had, however.

Meanwhile, Tony hung up the phone with dispatch. “We have a case. Let’s go.”

McGee and Ziva grabbed their things and followed Tony. With Gibbs acting director, Tony was acting team lead. They didn’t necessarily like it, especially not Ziva, but they knew they still had to work cases even without Gibbs.

No TADs or probies had been assigned. Partially, because Gibbs wanted to see how the existing team worked without him and partially because they still had three people and shouldn’t need one. Of course, if the case ended up to big for a three man team, he’d assign someone to help the MCRT. 

Everyone was surprised when Gibbs didn’t try to run the case that just came in. Everyone except, of course, Gibbs himself. Gibbs had his own reasons for accepting the director’s position, after all. 

They were more than what he’d told the director and very personal in nature. Ducky would be proud of a few of them and horrified by others. One of the main reasons is that he was ready to settle down, but not with Hollis and wanted an excuse to pawn her off on someone else if they had more joint investigations.

Another reason of Gibbs was that, he was tired of bad directors after Tom Morrow. Jenny had severe issues. Leon started off bad though he’d been shaping up to be pretty decent if this hadn’t happened. 

Gibbs knew that he needed to step up. He didn’t want to see who else they’d bring in for the job. That meant that he had to let Tony take the lead regardless of how much he missed being directly in action.

Tony took Gibbs stepping back in stride as he did most things and ran the investigation competently. Ziva seethed with fury that Tony was trying to give her orders. McGee didn't mind Tony ordering him around. He was used to it.

When they had a break while they were waiting for Abby and Ducky to process the body and evidence, Ziva headed up to MTAC. “You must take over the case.” Ziva demanded of Gibbs.

Gibbs glanced away from what he was watching to glare at Ziva. “You need to learn to take orders from Tony. It’s the only way you’ll grow.”

“I can’t take orders from him. He’s a child. I need to reach for the empyrean. You’re the only one that can lead me there.”

“I’m no one’s angel, Ziva. Go. Tony will lead you now.”

“Gibbs.” Ziva pleaded.

“No, Ziva. Tony’s the one who can help you now.”

“No!” Ziva screeched, storming out of MTAC in frustration.

Tony ignored Ziva’s frustration and continued to competently lead the team in their investigation of the dead petty officer. They didn’t have much, yet. Abby was still running her tests and Ducky was still determining cause of death. 

“Ziva, write up your witness statements. Once that’s done, we’ll have a campfire and figure out what we know so far.”

Ziva let out a frustrated gurgle as she sat down at her desk. As she typed her report, she attempted to provoke Tony and make him break his calm facade. If she could prove to someone that DiNozzo wasn’t fit to be team leader, perhaps things would resolve to her satisfaction.

As Tony continued to remain calm, Ziva’s frustrations increased. She needed him to get mad to stand any chance at getting anyone to listen to her after Gibbs shot her down. She suffered through the campfire all the while plotting things she could do to Tony.

Fortunately for Ziva, the case was relatively straightforward and with Ducky and Abby’s information, the team was able to apprehend the suspect and get a confession quickly. Unfortunately for Ziva, they got another case the next day that went similarly to this one. No amount of pleading with Gibbs would get him to take over. 

Ziva seethed quietly. Well, as quietly as she could as she pulled every trick she knew short of disemboweling Tony to get him to react. It continued like this for about a week as Tony had a number of meetings behind closed doors with Gibbs and SecNav around the transition to Gibbs becoming the permanent director instead of acting director.

Finally, an all employees announcement was issued stating Gibbs agreement to become permanent director. Tony rubbed his ears, which were still ringing with Ziva’s screech of horror. The next day, Ziva quit and fled to Israel. 

No one missed her. McGee became Tony’s SFA and the team gained two probies, twins actually. Susan and Samuel Wang were McGee’s first probies to train. Tony, of course, supported McGee in his training of the newbies. 

Fortunately the probies were not timid like Tim had been, as Tony wasn’t sure that Tim would be able to dish out the needed toughening if they had been. Tim and Tony had gotten past what Tony had done to make sure Tim could handle his own, but Tony knew Tim still hated that Tony had done it. Tony knew Tim would eventually have to do something similar, but hopefully by the time that rolled around the memories would no longer be fresh in Tim’s mind.

A few months in, after things had settled down, the team was starting to get in sync with Tony as team lead. It dawned on Tony that Gibbs was no longer on the same team as him. In fact, he wondered if Gibbs had taken the promotion because he was interested in Tony and they couldn’t be together when they were on the same team. 

So far Gibbs had shown no signs of trying to start something with Tony, but Tony didn’t think that was due to lack of interest. Still since Gibbs hadn’t made a move, it was up to Tony to do so. He started making plans to woo Gibbs, each one more extravagant than the last. 

When he’d realize a plan was particularly stupid, he’d slap himself on the head which looked extremely odd to anyone who happened to be around him at the time. Susan and Samuel had approached McGee about their team leader’s very odd behavior. Tim had told them not to worry about it. 

However, as McGee watched Tony, he became more and more concerned that Tony had gone crazy. Not only did everyone see the periodic self head slap, but McGee had noticed Tony carrying all sorts of odd items and leaving them on the Director’s desk. The first had been a wood block. The second a hand tool of some sort. 

The third had been the oddest of them all, a plant. McGee really wondered if DiNozzo had lost his mind. On top of that, Gibbs seemed to spend his time smirking at the world in general, which really freaked McGee out. 

That meant McGee either had to drop it or go to SecNav with his concerns that his team lead and the new director were losing it. McGee wasn’t ready to go to SecNav, so he watched Tony and sometimes Gibbs too. Any odd behavior, he noted down.

He soon had a 30 page word document with all the odd behaviors he’d noted and finally felt he had to tell somebody. If he had brought it to Gibbs or DiNozzo, they could have resolved this easily, but instead he took it to SecNav. That led to SecNav ordering polygraphs on everyone in the DC office just to be safe.

Needless to say McGee regretted going to SecNav most of all. When Gibbs and Tony realized just why the polygraphs had been ordered, they chuckled. Gibbs then pulled SecNav aside and informed him that all the weird behavior McGee had noticed was due to DiNozzo courting him. 

SecNav pressed Gibbs for more information, but he refused to say anything further. He left DiNozzo to handle his own SFA. Tony took McGee out to coffee for the revelation that he’d been attempting to woo Gibbs. 

Tony wasn’t sure how McGee would react to that news and didn’t want it to get into the NCIS gossip system. Plus, this really was a private matter between the two of them. Even Gibbs was staying out of it.

McGee stared at Tony trepidatiously. He figured he was in trouble for reporting Gibbs and Tony to SecNav. He had no idea what Tony would choose to do to punish him, however. Team Lead Tony handled things differently than SFA Tony ever had, leaving McGee extremely worried.

Tony noticed, of course. “Relax, McGee. I’m not going to eat you.”

McGee rolled his eyes in response.

“I just wanted to let you know that I’m not crazy.”

“Then what the hell have you been doing?”

“I’ve been wooing Gibbs. I succeeded too.” Tony smirked happily.

McGee stared at Tony in shock. “You’ve been doing what?”

“Wooing Gibbs. Is that a problem?”

“It’s just. It’s Gibbs.”

“So? He still has sex.”

“I know that, but I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to deal with his multifarious bastardness.”

Tony rolled his eyes at that one. “He’s had four wives McGee. He knows how to take care of a partner. Plus, I know him a lot better than any of his wives. We’ll be fine.”

“If you’re sure, Tony.”

“I’m sure. Gibbs is sure, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> For those not aware, I did get a job in June but I wasn't happy there. My old job(the one that laid me off) was hiring again and they wanted me back, so I went back to them. I've now started my old job again. I expect to post daily again at least until 10/25/2017 and hopefully longer than that, but we shall see how it goes. I hope everyone still enjoys reading my random drabbles and longer stories.
> 
> Prompts are currently open. If you'd like to prompt me, please do so [here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/NCIS_Prompts_2017/profile). Note you have to be an ao3 member to do this. 
> 
> If you are not an ao3 member, you can prompt me [here](http://cutsycat.livejournal.com/50701.html). Please follow the same rules as are listed in the above link. However, because this is a handmade prompt form(that thinks it's a poll), it is considerably more limited than what ao3 provides, so please use the ao3 form if you're an ao3 member. Please note the name option is for a name that I can say this is for so that you know it's for you. Since this is for non ao3 members it won't be true gifts, but you will be mentioned in the notes.
> 
> Feel free to leave feedback here either about how the prompts are setup or about the story.


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